Analysis of the Correlation Between Healthy Lifestyle Patterns and Work Stress in Psychiatric Nurses

Abstract

Introduction: This study explores the status of mental healthcare workers in the eastern region with respect to work pressure, health-promoting lifestyle patterns, and their related factors, which can provide an important reference to aid the formulation and development of health promotion strategies for such individuals. Methods: A total of 115 questionnaires were distributed and 112 valid questionnaires were recovered, with a recovery rate of 97.4%. The number of samples required for regression analysis was 99, as calculated using G-power software. The effect of work stress on health-promoting lifestyle patterns (β=-0.342, p<0.001) was negative, indicating that a health-promoting lifestyle was better and less stressful. Results: This accounted for 11.70% of the total variation in the health-promoting lifestyle scores (F=14.164, p<0.001, R=0.342). The important predictive variables of health-promoting lifestyle patterns had the greatest influence on work stress (β=-0.302, p=0.001). Discussion: The results of the comprehensive analysis showed that the standardized score of the health-promoting lifestyle of psychiatric nurses was 60.86 points. The overall health-promoting lifestyle of this study was lower than that of clinical nurses in two regional hospitals in Pingtung (the standardized score index is 64.84). This shows that the health-promoting lifestyle of psychiatric nursing staff is only better than that of public health-related staff in the same nursing work, and its overall health-promoting lifestyle is slightly worse than that of general nursing staff and school nurses. Conclusions: This influence was negative, indicating that the greater the work pressure, the worse the implementation of health-promoting lifestyle patterns. Creating a friendly workplace and implementing workplace health-promoting programs, organizing and encouraging psychiatric caregivers to participate in networking activities, and form families can help reduce mental health care workers’ work pressure, improve health, and promote lifestyle participation thus maintaining physical and mental health status.